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Scott Spencer's Bookcase

Scott Spencer (born September 1, 1945 in Washington, D.C.) is an American author who has written eleven novels. He also wrote the screenplay for the 1993 movie Father Hood. Two of Spencer's novels, Endless Love and Waking the Dead, have been adapted into films. Endless Love was directed by Franco Zeffirelli in 1981, with a much less successful remake being done in 2014 by Shana Feste. Waking the Dead was produced by Jodie Foster and directed by Keith Gordon in 2000. The novels Endless Love and A Ship Made of Paper have both been nominated for the National Book Award, with Endless Love selling over 2 million copies. Spencer has heavily panned both film adaptations of Endless Love.

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Almost before he knows it, Herman Broder, refugee and survivor of World War II, has three wives: Yadwiga, the Polish peasant who hid him from the Nazis; Masha , his beautiful and neurotic true love; and Tamara, his first wife, miraculously returned from the dead. Astonished by each new complication, and yet resigned to a life of evasion, Herman navigates a crowded, Yiddish New York with a sense of perpetually impending doom.

When The Stories of John Cheever was originally published, it became an immediate national bestseller and won the Pulitzer Prize. In the years since, it has become a classic. Vintage Books is proud to reintroduce this magnificent collection.

Here are sixty-one stories that chronicle the lives of what has been called "the greatest generation." From the early wonder and disillusionment of city life in "The Enormous Radio" to the surprising discoveries and common mysteries of suburbia in "The Housebreaker of Shady Hill" and "The Swimmer," Cheever tells us everything we need to know about "the pain and sweetness of life."

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"A deft, ironic, beautiful novel that deserves to be a classic." —William Styron

From the moment of its publication in 1961, Revolutionary Road was hailed as a masterpiece of realistic fiction and as the most evocative portrayal of the opulent desolation of the American suburbs. It's the story of Frank and April Wheeler, a bright, beautiful, and talented couple who have lived on the assumption that greatness is only just around the corner. With heartbreaking compassion and remorseless clarity, Richard Yates shows how Frank and April mortgage their spiritual birthright, betraying not only each other, but their best selves.

In his introduction to this edition, novelist Richard Ford pays homage to the lasting influence and enduring power of Revolutionary Road.

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A little bit about my books, most are in much better condition than listed I just really need to move them to help pay for hospis/funeral costs for my father. Not only will you be getting a quality book you will be helping a family of four that will be taking on a $700 lost per month as well.

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In Pale Fire Nabokov offers a cornucopia of deceptive pleasures: a 999-line poem by the reclusive genius John Shade; an adoring foreword and commentary by Shade's self-styled Boswell, Dr. Charles Kinbote; a darkly comic novel of suspense, literary idolatry and one-upmanship, and political intrigue.

Anna is a writer, author of one very successful novel, who now keeps four notebooks. In one, with a black cover, she reviews the African experience of her earlier years. In a red one she records her political life, her disillusionment with communism. In a yellow one she writes a novel in which the heroine relives part of her own experience. And in a blue one she keeps a personal diary. Finally, in love with an American writer and threatened with insanity, Anna resolves to bring the threads of all four books together in a golden notebook.

Doris Lessing's best-known and most influential novel, The Golden Notebook retains its extraordinary power and relevance decades after its initial publication.

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"Allen Ginsberg's Howl & Other Poems was originally published by City Lights Books in the fall of 1956. Subsequently seized by U.S. Customs and the San Francisco police, it was the subject of a long court trial at which a series of poets and professors persuaded the court that the book was not obscene.

Allen Ginsberg was born June 3, 1926, the son of Naomi Ginsberg, Russian émigré, and Louis Ginsberg, lyric poet and schoolteacher, in Paterson, New Jersey. To these facts Ginsberg adds: “High school in Paterson till 17, Columbia College, merchant marine, Texas and Denver copyboy, Times Square, amigos in jail, dishwashing, book reviews, Mexico City, market research, Satori in Harlem, Yucatan and Chiapas 1954, West Coast 3 years. Later Arctic Sea trip, Tangier, Venice, Amsterdam, Paris, read at Oxford Harvard Columbia Chicago, quit, wrote Kaddish 1959, made tape to leave behind & fade in Orient awhile. Carl Solomon to whom Howl is addressed, is a intuitive Bronx dadaist and prose-poet.”"

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Letting Go is Philip Roth’s first full-length novel, published just after Goodbye, Columbus, when he was twenty-nine. Set in 1950s Chicago, New York, and Iowa City, Letting Go presents as brilliant a fictional portrait as we have of a mid-century America defined by social and ethical constraints and by moral compulsions conspicuously different from those of today. Newly discharged from the Korean War army, reeling from his mother’s recent death, freed from old attachments and hungrily seeking others, Gabe Wallach is drawn to Paul Herz, a fellow graduate student in literature, and to Libby, Paul’s moody, intense wife. Gabe’s desire to be connected to the ordered “world of feeling” that he finds in books is first tested vicariously by the anarchy of the Herzes’ struggles with responsible adulthood and then by his own eager love affairs. Driven by the desire to live seriously and act generously, Gabe meets an impassable test in the person of Martha Reganhart, a spirited, outspoken, divorced mother of two, a formidable woman who, according to critic James Atlas, is masterfully portrayed with “depth and resonance.” The complex liaison between Gabe and Martha and Gabe’s moral enthusiasm for the trials of others are at the heart of this ambitious first novel. “[Roth] has the finest eye for the details of American life since Sinclair Lewis.” ― Stanley Edgar Hyman

An indefatigable, irresistible, and wildly inappropriate Jewish mother takes her 17-year-old son to school in this uproarious coming-of-age comedy

Tall and scattered-looking, Joseph has just graduated from high school and is ready for college. But is college ready for him? Apparently not, judging by the rejection letter he receives from Bates and the deafening silence that greets his application to Columbia.

While his friends pack their bags for schools across the country, Joseph mopes around the apartment in his bathrobe and checks the mailbox obsessively. It’s enough to make his mother fear for the boy’s sanity—so she resolves to take matters into her own hands. What follows is a sidesplitting series of misadventures as Meg, whom the New York Times Book Review called “the most unforgettable mother since Medea,” pulls out all the stops to get her boy what he wants.

This ebook features an illustrated biography of Bruce Jay Friedman including rare photos from the author’s personal collection.

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Querry, a world-famous architect, is the victim of a terrible attack of indifference: he no longer finds meaning in art or pleasure in life. Arriving anonymously at a Congo leper village, he is diagnosed as the mental equivalent of a "burnt-out case", a leper who has gone through a stage of mutilation. However, as Querry loses himself in work for the lepers his disease of mind slowly approaches a cure. Then the white community finds out who Querry is...

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.